Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete eBook

v. 50. Feltro.] The Bishop of Felto having
received a number of fugitives from Ferrara, who were
in opposition to the Pope, under a promise of protection,
afterwards gave them up, so that they were reconducted
to that city, and the greater part of them there put
to death.

v. 53. Malta’s.] A tower, either in the
citadel of Padua, which under the tyranny of Ezzolino,
had been “with many a foul and midnight murder
fed,” or (as some say) near a river of the same
name, that falls into the lake of Bolsena, in which
the Pope was accustomed to imprison such as had been
guilty of an irremissible sin.

v. 56 This priest.] The bishop, who, to show himself
a zealous partisan of the Pope, had committed the
above-mentioned act of treachery.

v. 58. We descry.] “We behold the things
that we predict, in the mirrors of eternal truth.”

v. 64. That other joyance.] Folco.

v. 76. Six shadowing wings.] “Above it
stood the seraphims: each one had six wings.”
Isaiah, c. vi. 2.

v. 80. The valley of waters.] The Mediterranean
sea.

v. 80. That.] The great ocean.

v. 82. Discordant shores.] Europe and Africa.

v. 83. Meridian.] Extending to the east, the
Mediterranean at last reaches the coast of Palestine,
which is on its horizon when it enters the straits
of Gibraltar. “Wherever a man is,”
says Vellutello, “there he has, above his head,
his own particular meridian circle.”

v. 85. —­’Twixt Ebro’s stream
And Macra’s.] Eora, a river to the west, and
Macra, to the east of Genoa, where Folco was born.

v. 88. Begga.] A place in Africa, nearly opposite
to Genoa.

v. 89. Whose haven.] Alluding to the terrible
slaughter of the Genoese made by the Saracens in 936,
for which event Vellutello refers to the history of
Augustino Giustiniani.

v. 91. This heav’n.] The planet Venus.

v. 93. Belus’ daughter.] Dido.

v. 96. She of Rhodope.] Phyllis.

v. 98. Jove’s son.] Hercules.

v. 112. Rahab.] Heb. c. xi. 31.

v. 120. With either palm.] “By the crucifixion
of Christ”

v. 126. The cursed flower.] The coin of Florence,
called the florin.

v. 130. The decretals.] The canon law.

v. 134. The Vatican.] He alludes either to
the death of Pope Boniface viii. or, as Venturi
supposes, to the coming of the Emperor Henry vii.
into Italy, or else, according to the yet more probable
conjecture of Lombardi, to the transfer of the holy
see from Rome to Avignon, which took place in the
pontificate of Clement V.

CANTO X

v. 7. The point.] “To that part of heaven,”
as Venturi explains it, “in which the equinoctial
circle and the Zodiac intersect each other, where
the common motion of the heavens from east to west
may be said to strike with greatest force against the
motion proper to the planets; and this repercussion,
as it were, is here the strongest, because the velocity
of each is increased to the utmost by their respective
distance from the poles. Such at least is the
system of Dante.”